Tax-Free Racing Cars

Nobody’s importing these.

LBO, Sri Lanka’s only honest business publication, has a great tongue in cheek take on the most talked about part of the 2013 budget, the new tax free status of racing cars. Seriously, it’s like the President’s sons said they wanted to import toys to play with and Mahinda was like ‘of course’. Meanwhile farmers have to pay more for tractors. And everyone has to pay more for dumb policy.

Here’s the commentary from LBO:

Realistically, a racing car is not going to be used every day, in fact it is most likely to be used only at night. That too, only when night races are underway in Colombo. At other times, however, the 630 horse power (6.5 litre V12) engine could be coupled to an electricity generator that could light up an entire town in rural Sri Lanka.

Attaching a plough to a Lambo is also not a problem either and the light-weight all-wheel drive sports car is a much better machine than the ultra-heavy Swaraj tractors already on the market. That is probably why purpose-built tractors have been slapped with an additional tax of about half a million rupees in the latest budget. (Tax free racing cars to boost agriculture)

Seriously though, what is a racing car? We don’t have dedicated race tracks and the night races run normal cars, everything from Nissan Starlets to Lamborghinis. So, if I take the exhaust off a Starlet or try to sex change a regular Mitsubishi to an EVO, is that a racing car? Or, is the relevant question still how related am I to the ruling family?

Read the LBO article, it’s hilarious. Here’s one: “One of the best racing cars of all time, the Lamborghini, started off as a tractor made with World War II military surplus.” Heh.